Every September our daughter asks her children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The eldest, at six, wants to be a ballerina and t...

Sunday, 16 February 2020

Ghosts

They dot the countryside, these old buildings, once places of congregation where people prayed and sang hymns of praise for all the big occasions in life and the times between. Now they are decommissioned and up for sale, some bought and repurposed, others left to disintegrate. This is possibly the fate of the old church on a country road west of our city.

It is slowly falling apart, peeling paint and rotting boards,

without a time of service posted or even a name. There is nothing welcoming about this building. Former congregants, having passed to their eternal rest, fill the yard, the old headstones doing the best they can to stand vigil.

Someone has placed the fallen ones to lean against the walls. On this cold day in February, as I walk around the building and through the cemetery, the silence and cold envelop me like a shroud.

This was a Presbyterian Church, the second here in Birch Hill, the congregation having outgrown the first built in 1800. This building was started in 1858. In 1925, when the United Church of Canada formed from four Protestant religions, including Presbyterian, the congregation of this church split, some joining the United Church. They built a new church in 1928, across the road from the Presbyterian building. The United Church is still in use and in good repair.

Meanwhile the older building is crumbling.

Behind the church, among more headstones, three white birds which looked like Willow ptarmigan, flew off as I approached. We surprised each other.

However it was not surprising but somehow fitting to see such beautiful white creatures here among the ruins.

Gorgeous photos but oh that picture of the old church makes me so sad.I hate seeing it crumbling and aching in the cold silence of the winter day.I do love to wander around in old cemeteries.What history there is among those headstones.I do hope they will remain.

Those two churches look as though they were carbon copies of one another. I find those abandoned buildings sad too. When I was a child we used to camp in Eastern Oregon and the abandoned farm and ranch houses, many from before 1900, would occupy my imagination for days. Who lived there, why did they leave, where did they go? So many stories blowing in the wind.

I love the shape of these old churches. They looked like a church, not like many today which could be anything. I know, it's not the shape of a building that matters, but I still like these older looks.

These sad old buildings are so romantic to look at in a melancholy sort of way, but I would much rather see them being cared for and a use found for them. Maybe someone will fall in love with this old church one day and give it a new life.

I don't know how I have missed these recent posts...normally I check your blog every day. It is such a shame to see these old buildings going uncared for. But maybe too expensive for someone to keep up.